Andrew Lavoott Bluestone has been an attorney for 40 years, with a career that spans criminal prosecution, civil litigation and appellate litigation. Mr. Bluestone became an Assistant District Attorney in Kings County in 1978, entered private practice in 1984 and in 1989 opened his private law office and took his first legal malpractice case.
Since 1989, Bluestone has become a leader in the New York Plaintiff’s Legal Malpractice bar, handling a wide array of plaintiff’s legal malpractice cases arising from catastrophic personal injury, contracts, patents, commercial litigation, securities, matrimonial and custody issues, medical malpractice, insurance, product liability, real estate, landlord-tenant, foreclosures and has defended attorneys in a limited number of legal malpractice cases.
Bluestone also took an academic role in field, publishing the New York Attorney Malpractice Report from 2002-2004. He started the “New York Attorney Malpractice Blog” in 2004, where he has published more than 4500 entries.
Mr. Bluestone has written 38 scholarly peer-reviewed articles concerning legal malpractice, many in the Outside Counsel column of the New York Law Journal. He has appeared as an Expert witness in multiple legal malpractice litigations.
Mr. Bluestone is an adjunct professor of law at St. John’s University College of Law, teaching Legal Malpractice. Mr. Bluestone has argued legal malpractice cases in the Second Circuit, in the New York State Court of Appeals, each of the four New York Appellate Divisions, in all four of the U.S. District Courts of New York and in Supreme Courts all over the state. He has also been admitted pro haec vice in the states of Connecticut, New Jersey and Florida and was formally admitted to the US District Court of Connecticut and to its Bankruptcy Court all for legal malpractice matters. He has been retained by U.S. Trustees in legal malpractice cases from Bankruptcy Courts, and has represented municipalities, insurance companies, hedge funds, communications companies and international manufacturing firms. Mr. Bluestone regularly lectures in CLEs on legal malpractice.
Based upon his professional experience Bluestone was named a Diplomate and was Board Certified by the American Board of Professional Liability Attorneys in 2008 in Legal Malpractice. He remains Board Certified. He was admitted to The Best Lawyers in America from 2012-2019. He has been featured in Who’s Who in Law since 1993.
In the last years, Mr. Bluestone has been featured for two particularly noteworthy legal malpractice cases. The first was a settlement of an $11.9 million dollar default legal malpractice case of Yeo v. Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman which was reported in the NYLJ on August 15, 2016. Most recently, Mr. Bluestone obtained a rare plaintiff’s verdict in a legal malpractice case on behalf of the City of White Plains v. Joseph Maria, reported in the NYLJ on February 14, 2017. It was the sole legal malpractice jury verdict in the State of New York for 2017.
Bluestone has been at the forefront of the development of legal malpractice principles and has contributed case law decisions, writing and lecturing which have been recognized by his peers. He is regularly mentioned in academic writing, and his past cases are often cited in current legal malpractice decisions. He is recognized for his ample writings on Judiciary Law § 487, a 850 year old statute deriving from England which relates to attorney deceit.
Daniel Wise at the NYLJ reports that two judges abruptly left the bench yesterday:
"Justice Resigns Amid Reported Probe
Supreme Court Justice Lawrence I. Horowitz (See Profile) abruptly resigned from the bench yesterday, according Ninth Judicial District Administrative Judge Francis A. Nicolai (See Profile). Justice Horowitz, 56, who has reportedly been under investigation for intervening…
A Staten Island judge rendered an interesting decision concerning loans to litigants in structured settlement cases, and perhaps during litigation. Plaintiff has a structured settlement coming to her, and needed court approval to convert it into legal fees for a custody dispute case. Judge said no.
Case is interesting for two reasons: first, how free…
Yesterday we published a story about a legal malpractice and mediation which has been widely reported. Plaintiff claimed that the attorney negligently lowered a settlement demand, which damaged it. Discovery of the mediation discussions was not permitted. Today we have a comment from one of the attorneys:
"A comment from counsel for Wimsatt:…
Here from the Illinois Appellate Blog is a Insurance carrier versus their trial level attorney case. Carrier lost a declaratory judgment coverage case, and now claims that the attorney failed to appeal. In the decision, based upon an automobile accident coverage issue in which the insurer claimed $ 25,000 of coverage, and ultimately paid…
This case, reported today is a dismissal of legal malpractice because the attorneys represented the company, and not the individual plaintiff shareholders.
"As a threshold matter, in order to establish a cause of action for legal malpractice, the plaintiff must demonstrate the existence of an attorney-client relationship (AG Capital Funding Partners, L.P. v. State…
The Court of Appeals has found in Rivera v Anilesh ,2007 NY Slip Op 05134 , Decided on June 12, 2007 , that a dentist’s habit [his regular procedure] of injecting anesthetic, is admissible to show lack of negligence.
"In this malpractice action by a patient against her dentist, we are asked whether the dentist’s…
Misconduct of a partner led to this verdict yesterday. The jury found that partner Henry I. Rothman abandoned a three person partnership, staying with only one of the partners.
This case started as a legal fee matter in Civil Court!! Parker Chapin then saw a counterclaim for legal malpractice. "The jury awarded $2 million in compensatory…
Mark Hamblett of the NYLJ reports:
"Failure to disclose a key document on insurance coverage for the Port Authority at the World Trade Center in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terror attacks and other discovery abuses is going to cost Wiley Rein and Coughlin Duffy.
The two law firms and the company they…
"A Philadelphia judge has tossed out of court the defamation action brought against Cozen O’Connor by a Main Line building fortune heir. A dispute over family money prompted legal action by Lincoln Meyers’ mother and a bank from which he had taken out several loans.
At one point, Meyers alleged, the…
This case probably stands for less than it may seem, but this offhand comment, lowering the demand from $ 3 million to $ 1.5 million, outside of the hearing of the mediator, is fodder for discovery.
"Los Angeles attorney William Wimsatt learned that lesson Monday when L.A.’s Second District Court of Appeal refused to…
